Organic agriculture combats antibiotic resistance

Dec 13, 2017

Photo credit: US Department of Agriculture

Organic agriculture combats antibiotic resistance on multiple fronts. Studies show that by prohibiting antibiotic use in organic livestock production, organic farms and food harbor less antibiotic resistant bacteria than conventional. A 2017 study in Frontiers in Microbiology found that pigs raised on organic farms have significantly fewer strains of antibiotic-resistant Campylobacter, abacteria known for its ability to infect humans from livestock, than pigs raised conventionally. A new study also demonstrates that commonly used herbicides can have the unintended consequence of increasing bacterial resistance to antibiotics, and highlights that organic can combat antibiotic resistance through the prohibition of most herbicides